Perfectionism

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From our earliest years, we endure being evaluated and corrected by various people in our lives. When we first learn to talk, our parents correct our pronunciation. When we are young we are taught by others how to dress, walk, and eat properly. As we grow our behaviour continues to be evaluated, criticized, corrected and rewarded.

At home and at school we learn that to attain the approval of others we must strive to achieve certain standards. When we make mistakes, there are often practical negative consequences.

The frequent demands to meet and surpass established standards continue into adulthood. Many workplaces expect employees to improve their performance by accomplishing more in less time. Companies strive to be more successful than their competitors.

In addition to pressures from the outside, many of us feel pressure from within to succeed or perform at a certain level. When cooking a meal for friends, it feels good if your guests enjoy their meal.

The desire to improve your performance or to meet high standards is not the same as being perfectionistic. For example, students who don’t care about their performance in school probably don’t study as hard and are likely to perform more poorly than students who have high personal standards.

The key aspects are at the heart of perfectionism:

The relentless striving for extremely high standards (for yourself/and or others) that are personally demanding, in the context of the individual. Typically, to an outsider the standards are considered to be unreasonable given the circumstances.

Judging your self-worth based largely on your ability to strive for and achieve such unrelenting standards.

Experiencing negative consequences of setting such demanding standards, yet continuing to go for them despite the huge cost to you.

Many people think of perfectionism as something positive and often visualise a high achiever. However, sometimes the drive to do well can actually impair performance. Perfectionists often elaborate a number of negatives regarding perfectionism:

I have no free time

No achievement is ever enough

I blame myself if things aren’t done just right

I can’t stand it when other people don’t do things my way

I don’t trust others to do as good a job as I do so I end up doing it all

I have to go over my work many times until it’s acceptable to me

I have to do more and more in order to feel accepted by others

I’m so afraid of failing that I never get started

If you think that you might be a perfectionist and have a sense that the costs of these behaviours might be outweighing the benefits but don’t know what to do next, we offer effective evidence based perfectionism disorder treatment in Sydney.

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About Angus Munro Psychology

We specialise in evidence based treatments for relieving psychological distress such as anxiety, stress and depression. We also excel in helping people create lasting, powerful change in career, business and life. Find out more